My sketch of Kooser, and notes from the workshopHad the chance to sit in on Ted Kooser's final session at the Wyoming Writer's annual conference this past weekend in Casper. I regretted missing the opening readings and Saturday sessions, but I took notes and even tried to sketch him as he stood at the podium...my sketches seem to turn out caricature-like, although that isn't the view I'm going for.
A copy of his poem "Etude" was handed out, but he began with a reading of an essay he'd written about a house he had once lived in with his wife and children, and where he'd read in the paper that a 15-year-old boy had recently (in relation to when he'd written the essay) been murdered there and two other people wounded in a robbery attempt over cocaine. He was building a scale model of his wife's childhood home, and while he wallpapered the walls and painted, his imagination would fit into the rooms. He imagined himself living there, though he never had, and how the death of the boy had made his heart drop at the thought of he and his family living in that house and feeling safe while there.
The example was about metaphor and how one thing becomes something else, and something else, but has to become, to come back to, that thing again. Kooser specialty is metaphor. We lowly poets tend to say things like "The clouds in the sky were the color of gun metal gray as they pelted the ground with hail." A prosaic example, but Kooser helped diagram what metaphor can and should do. He had some great stories throughout -- like meeting the national horse-shoe-throwing champion. He asked him how he got so good and he said, "I threw 100 shoes a day." Kooser's poetry students were assinged to read 100 poems before they attempted to write one.
Think of metaphor as an imaginary equation, where one side must equal the other. Here's the poem so you can have the example that he gave to us:
Etude
I have been watching a Great Blue Heron
fish in the cattails, easing ahead
with the stealth of a lover composing a letter,
the hungry words looping and blue
as they coil and uncoil, as they kiss and sting.
Let's say that he holds down an everyday job
in an office. His blue suit blends in.
Long days swim beneath the glass top
of his desk, each one alike. On the lip
of each morning, a bubble trembles.
No one has seen him there, writing a letter
to a woman he loves. His pencil is poised
in the air like the beak of a bird.
He would spear the whole world if he could,
toss it and swallow it live.
Pretty spectacular stuff for the seeming simplicity of the image, yet Kooser led us on a journey of how he crafts his metaphors. Tenor and vehicle are the two sides of the equation -- tenor is the real thing, the blue heron; vehicle is the imaginative thing, in this case, the lover composing a letter. Remember, he said, "comparisons are most effective when they are the most disparate or widely divergent." Kooser stays in the imaginative realm with the lover who "holds down an every day job, in a blue suit that blends in." The blue refers back to the blue heron, a blending in to their environments, the heron tall and thin like the cattails he is walking in, the man blending in the shades of suits. The heron moves slowly, so as not to disturb the water and scaring the fish. The man wants to write a love letter at his job, and "No one has seen him there, writing a letter/to a woman he loves." His, and the heron's, inconspicuousness are their own reward. "The long days swim beneath the glass top," the days are like the heron looking for fish, waiting for the opportunity to spear one. The man's "pencil is poised in the air like the beak of a bird," and the stealth of the man "would spear the whole world if he could, toss it and swallow it live." The man would take in the whole world if he could by writing the love letter, that kisses and stings.
Kooser points out that only those things that have something in common to the tenor and the vehicle make sense and hold the poem together. These things can be related on each side of the equation. When metaphor is thought of in this way, then one can begin to fine tune a metaphor.
He read another poem about an aluminum boat floating on a pond. The imaginative part of the poem involved a fat man who becomes like the boat, precariously tethered to life because he hasn't taken care of himself, but also because we are all lightly tethered to life; the temporal nature of man.
Kooser mentioned a Swedish author, Tomas Transtromer, whom he especially admires for his metaphoric talent, such as "turning out the light, it was a tablet dissolving in a glass of darkenss." Kooser is a student of simplicity and clarity. He is devotee of E.B White, and he favors gramatically correct writing and punctuation. He thinks writing should be clear and transparent. He doesn't like the small "i" and thinks sentences should begin with a capital. He said, "the minute the reader's attention is called to the surface of the page is when the writing becomes weak." He also said that nothing kills a poem faster than a lot of exposition--this extra information should become the title.
He also feels that many of the performance poets depend on their performance of their work. When these poets die, their poetry will die with them. Most of these poems don't hold up without the performance. He also cited Dylan Thomas, who had a wonderful and melodic voice in the reading of his poems. When he died, people stopped reading him. My thought: it is interesting that performance poetry is not just a phenomenon of the younger generation, but has some bit of a cultural history link.
Pretty spectacular stuff for the seeming simplicity of the image, yet Kooser led us on a journey of how he crafts his metaphors. Tenor and vehicle are the two sides of the equation -- tenor is the real thing, the blue heron; vehicle is the imaginative thing, in this case, the lover composing a letter. Remember, he said, "comparisons are most effective when they are the most disparate or widely divergent." Kooser stays in the imaginative realm with the lover who "holds down an every day job, in a blue suit that blends in." The blue refers back to the blue heron, a blending in to their environments, the heron tall and thin like the cattails he is walking in, the man blending in the shades of suits. The heron moves slowly, so as not to disturb the water and scaring the fish. The man wants to write a love letter at his job, and "No one has seen him there, writing a letter/to a woman he loves." His, and the heron's, inconspicuousness are their own reward. "The long days swim beneath the glass top," the days are like the heron looking for fish, waiting for the opportunity to spear one. The man's "pencil is poised in the air like the beak of a bird," and the stealth of the man "would spear the whole world if he could, toss it and swallow it live." The man would take in the whole world if he could by writing the love letter, that kisses and stings.
Kooser points out that only those things that have something in common to the tenor and the vehicle make sense and hold the poem together. These things can be related on each side of the equation. When metaphor is thought of in this way, then one can begin to fine tune a metaphor.
He read another poem about an aluminum boat floating on a pond. The imaginative part of the poem involved a fat man who becomes like the boat, precariously tethered to life because he hasn't taken care of himself, but also because we are all lightly tethered to life; the temporal nature of man.
Kooser mentioned a Swedish author, Tomas Transtromer, whom he especially admires for his metaphoric talent, such as "turning out the light, it was a tablet dissolving in a glass of darkenss." Kooser is a student of simplicity and clarity. He is devotee of E.B White, and he favors gramatically correct writing and punctuation. He thinks writing should be clear and transparent. He doesn't like the small "i" and thinks sentences should begin with a capital. He said, "the minute the reader's attention is called to the surface of the page is when the writing becomes weak." He also said that nothing kills a poem faster than a lot of exposition--this extra information should become the title.
He also feels that many of the performance poets depend on their performance of their work. When these poets die, their poetry will die with them. Most of these poems don't hold up without the performance. He also cited Dylan Thomas, who had a wonderful and melodic voice in the reading of his poems. When he died, people stopped reading him. My thought: it is interesting that performance poetry is not just a phenomenon of the younger generation, but has some bit of a cultural history link.
--Linda Coatney
